Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Random updates: kobo, seaonc, furniture

Just read this article about eBook devices infiltrating book clubs. I've never participated in a book club. I don't think I can handle being in one and talking about how a passage feels to me. I'm the type of person who goes for the whole picture. I don't spend time remembering and reflecting over the details. I read pretty fast but I definitely don't remember everything I read. Anyway, at one point in this article, someone talks about smelling the print and touching the yellow pages. One of the problems that I always had with old paperbacks is that they make me sneeze and my eyes itch when they are too old. I literally have to go outside and air out the book. Even then, I have to hold them at arm's length. Maybe I should have just gotten a newer copy.http://www.mercurynews.com/books/ci_17776842?nclick_check=1

My Kobo crashed last night and I had to reset the thing to get it to open library books. So annoying. It's a bug apparently and they haven't fixed it. I guess this is what happens when you for for the cheaper version of things. Sigh... Anyway, it works fine now. I'm halfway through The Girl Who Played with Fire (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard). There was really not much happening during the first part of the book. It was all setting up the story, letting you get to know some people who ended up getting killed later on. But somehow, the author still managed to make it really interesting. Maybe because the audience is already attached to the main character and there is quite a bit of character development during this first part.

I went to a SEAONC dinner meeting today. It was their student night. Last year, they had separate sessions for the Berkeley and Stanford students. This time, they had both. There were a lot less Cal students though. I wonder if it was bad advertisement on their part. They are so much closer. But maybe that's why. It seems like their students all came on their own. Whereas the Stanford students had an organized carpool. I said hi to some familiar faces and met some new people. I got an extra HK sim card from a friend so now my visitors can use it to call me. I have a feeling I'm going to end up with a collection of sim cards and Octopus cards.

I was looking at HK furniture and home-stuff stores yesterday. I'm pretty excited to go shopping for furniture and appliances. I realized that if I really have to supply everything (as in, my place is just a room), the budget can get pretty tight. Here's it's pretty standard that even an unfurnished apartment will come with a fridge, stove, and oven. But there's no guarantee of such things over there. It might literally just be a room. I hope I manage to find a place to live with some overlap with my hotel. That way, I can shop for furniture, have it all delivered, assemble things, and then move in. Having to sleep on the floor next to unassembled furniture is definitely not ideal. I've already looked up names and addresses of furniture and homeware stores and have a plan of attack. Looking forward to making some big purchases.

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About Me

I am a geotechnical engineer working in Hong Kong. I recently graduated from Stanford's M.S. program in civil engineering - geomechanics in March 2011. I did my undergrad at MIT, also in civil engineering. This blog contains stuff about my every day life, thoughts, things I want to share, etc.

Highlights of this blog:

- I started this blog in May 2007 when I decided to do an internship in Germany and didn't feel like writing personal letters to my friends and family about my experiences in Europe.

- After that summer, I spent my junior year on an exchange program with the University ofCambridge where I also studied civil engineering.

- Coming back to MIT for my senior year, I spent a good part of it in a class called D-Lab where we learn about appropriate technologies for developing countries.

- In January 2009, I went to Sierra Leone to field test some of these technologies that we explored over the semester.

- I finished my studies at MIT in June 2009 and am now at Stanford.

- I spent a quarter of my first year at Stanford working on a tsunami evacuation project for Padang, Indonesia. I spent Summer 2010 in West Sumatra continuing this project.

- I am now working in Hong Kong at a design firm as a geotechnical engineer.